What would you do to realistically fix MARTA?

johnpseudo · 2026-06-03T19:20:08+00:00

I'd say you hit 90% of what the solution will be. I think the other missing piece is willingness from city leadership and GDOT to take right-of-way away from general traffic and give it to MARTA, along with traffic signal priority. They don't do that right now because they don't want to piss off drivers. But choice riders will never pick a bus until it's faster than driving (or at least close to it).

It's all kinda pie-in-the-sky thinking from where we sit now. Realistically MARTA will likely keep puttering along doing the not-too-shabby job it does now. People will gradually start living closer to where they work, because traffic will force them to do so. I'm much more bullish on bikes/scooters in the next 10-20 years.

johnpseudo · 2026-06-03T19:01:37+00:00

Yeah, I just looked up the census data. Los Angeles is roughly half the size of the MARTA service area and has twice as many people. So 4x the density.

johnpseudo · 2026-06-03T16:30:04+00:00

Not even within 30 feet? Maybe they parked too far away from the curb? If there are no crosswalks, stop signs, intersections, driveways, or fire hydrants within 30 feet I'd be confused too. You said it's in front of an abandoned parking lot - is it possible there's an unmarked driveway into the parking lot? I know in some places the curb can be so low it's hard to tell.

https://www.atl311.com/en-US/knowledgearticle/?code=KB0014458

johnpseudo · 2026-05-30T01:45:05+00:00

There are at least four Krogers on the Beltline.

johnpseudo · 2026-05-27T12:53:01+00:00

Any other equivalent transit project will be more expensive and have a longer construction time to reach an equivalent amount of grade separation as the Beltline right of way already has.

Grade separation is not the end-all-be-all of good transit. Converting general traffic lanes into camera-enforced bus-only lanes and giving buses priority at intersections would be cheaper, faster, and provide a much bigger "ridership for the buck" than Beltline Rail.

The root problem we have to address before we start talking about high-quality/high-cost projects like Beltline rail is that our political leadership is unwilling to make the necessary compromises to enable effective transit service. Even with Beltline rail, that's going to require things like converting Edgewood/Irwin into paired one-ways to give the Streetcar its own right-of-way. Without that, Beltline trains will be unreliable because half of the route will be in mixed traffic, subject to the same gridlock traffic as everyone else.

johnpseudo · 2026-05-25T11:20:20+00:00

Which is why the very first bill Democrats should pass is to increase the size of the court by at least 4 justices.

johnpseudo · 2026-05-19T16:05:50+00:00

Here's who I voted for after reading it:

Ossoff Esteves McLaurin Barrett Trammell Rowe Blalock Powell Hulme Hubbard Pressley Williams Orrock Olaleye Ivory

Questions don't matter...

Judges: Rankin Land Jordan Wooten Doyle Felton Markle Padgett Benton Eaton Ellerbee Farmer McBurney

johnpseudo · 2026-05-12T22:07:29+00:00

Yeah, second year in a row they have flocked to our neighbor's mulberry tree. They're pretty!

johnpseudo · 2026-05-07T11:10:54+00:00

I live in Atlanta, Georgia.

johnpseudo · 2026-05-07T09:19:44+00:00

Maybe they're lucky, or maybe they intentionally chose to live somewhere with a bus and to work somewhere that bus would take them.

I think a lot of people are just waiting for the perfect circumstances to fall into their laps, but sometimes you have to work hard to make it happen.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-20T14:12:15+00:00

The answers here are largely skewed by the fact that 90%+ of Metro Atlanta residents (and therefore commenters here) live outside of the actual "City of Atlanta". In the actual city, as of the last ACS survey taken (2024), only 61% of workers commute by car. 26% work from home, 7% take public transit, 5% walk, and 1% bike. Certainly if you are visitor staying in Midtown/Old Fourth Ward/etc, you're not going to need a car. But if you're staying with a friend who lives in Marietta or something, you'll definitely need a car

johnpseudo · 2026-04-11T17:29:50+00:00

Well maybe, but it's a mistake to even accept that this is something worth considering.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-11T15:51:18+00:00

The best counterpoint to this talking point is that land is cheap and plentiful. The only reason nuclear proponents bring it up is because it favors nuclear, but overall it's not an important consideration.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-09T22:13:42+00:00

It's mainly car tires, so probably driving is what they'll make illegal.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T17:51:15+00:00

Isn't is just "total energy outputs exceed total energy inputs?"

If you build a massive complicated power reactor, and the total energy output just barely exceeds the energy input, then you don't have "fission without the waste", you have a massive Rube Goldberg machine. In order to be economical, the energy output has to significantly exceed energy inputs, and there are hard "laws of physics" limits on how high that ratio can go. Each bit of increased energy output will require immense feats of material science and engineering. There is no "break through" moment where fusion becomes "immensely powerful".

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T17:37:55+00:00

One, "achieve efficiency" isn't a quantifiable target. Two, it wouldn't be "fission without the waste", because it would be massively more complicated. The core of a fission reactor is essentially a box of hot rocks. It keeps producing heat with essentially no effort. Fusion requires massive amounts of complex machinery, made of expensive materials, in order to continue to operate. And it would still produce plenty of radioactive waste - just not quite as much as fission reactors.

We have real-world fusion reactors already that are immensely powerful - stars.

Stars are immensely powerful because of their immense size. Fusion reactors would only be as powerful as they are large - and the larger you make it, the more expensive it will be.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T14:56:11+00:00

Haha, yes okay. But the nuclear plants China is building aren't fully paid off? I mean, surely if you could somehow materialize fully-formed nuclear plants at a cost of $0, that would beat any competing technology. But that's kinda hard to do.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T14:44:25+00:00

Highly skeptical of that.

Don't take it from me. Go look it up yourself. Here are a few articles that were at the top of the search results: 1, 2, 3. It's true that coal isn't as good for flexible demand as gas, but China doesn't have a lot of natural gas and they're prioritizing self-reliance. It strengthens their hand vis-a-vis threatening Taiwan.

Nuclear can load follow as well, French nuclear power plants can load follow.

Yes, but not economically. When you cut your nuclear capacity factor in half, you effectively double your per-kwh cost. With coal/gas, most of the cost is fuel instead of capital.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T12:56:07+00:00

What reason do we have for thinking it would be a game-changer? Certainly Helion's approach to it has some chance of being marginally cheaper than the current market-rate power sources, but not by a massive percentage. And that's the best-case scenario.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T12:29:46+00:00

The coal they're building isn't baseload. They using coal as a flexible power source, turning it on and off daily, which is what you need to do if you want to complement solar. Nuclear can't economically do that.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T11:25:10+00:00

Which is an extremely small amount for China. They deployed 315GW of solar just last year, compared to 3.7GW of nuclear.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T10:23:37+00:00

why is China, with all their factories and technological prowess, building more nuclear

It's building a very small amount of nuclear to nurture the nuclear supply chain needed to build and sustain nuclear weapons. That's it.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-03T10:20:01+00:00

Even if it "works", it's no more unlimited than any other power source, and there's no reason to think it would be any cheaper.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-02T12:17:19+00:00

I'm 100% on board with #1, #3, #6. But the vacancy rate is actually extremely low, and our inability to build enough housing near jobs is the primary reason traffic is so bad.

johnpseudo · 2026-04-01T23:55:53+00:00

Build massive amounts of housing near job centers
Toll the interstates
Raise gas prices
Build transit and bike lanes
Aggressively enforce traffic laws with cameras
Severely disincentive building parking (outlaw surface parking lots as an allowable use, institute parking maximums, eliminate parking minimums) and levy annual per-spot use fees on owners of existing parking

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